Vodafone customer gains down

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freitasm

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#38220 26-Jul-2009 11:18

Good catch on last Friday's Vodafone PLC data... Vodafone New Zealand mobile growth slows down a bit... Last quarter the telco added 9,000 new mobile customers, compared to 57,000 a year ago.

manhinli

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#239034 26-Jul-2009 11:31

People held their connections (or breaths) for XT... and now also for 2degrees.

I do remember that Russell Stanners said on the Sunday programme that Vodafone take in roughly the same number of people leaving them. I don't see the rate of people moving away from Vodafone slowing that much.

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freitasm

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#239038 26-Jul-2009 11:54

Yes, he said that. But again - no gain, no coming ahead. Gaining just what you are losing doesn't make it good for investors in the long run.

Of course the company is growing in other directions (fixed line, fixed broadband, etc), and their declared strategy (as for a couple of years ago) was "to be the largest telco in New Zealand). You can obviously be a telco by buying an ISP (IHUG) and enter (slowly) the fixed line voice calling. But their core business is still mobile. And there isn't much growth going there if "we gain what we lose" is correct.

According to the report "Service revenue growth continued in New Zealand driven by strong growth in fixed line revenue and increased penetration of mobile internet and PC connectivity devices partially offset by the impact of a termination rate cut and weaker overall economic trends."

Obviously having a heavy prepay - 71.5% this quarter, 72% last quarter - out of its 2,502 million customers means their strategy of going after the discretionary expending for the sake of market share may have backfired since it means a much lower ARPU, easier to lose customers.

It's a though game. I heard Russel at the Telecommunications Summit saying "we fight discretionary expenditures. Every time the lotto prize goes up people think twice between topping up their prepay with $20 or buy a lotto ticket".

Comparing with other countries, Vodafone New Zealand shows really up there with third world countries in terms of prepay load on total customers:

Verizon Wireless (CDMA) 7% (38.9 million total customers)
Netherlands: 40.7% (4.6 million total customers)
Spain: 40.8% (16.9 million total customers)
Australia: 46.5% (3.9 million total customers)
Czech Republic: 48.5 (2.8 million total customers)
Poland: 53.3% (3.5 million total customers)
Germany: 54.1% (35.4 million total customers)
Hungary: 55.1% (2.5 million total customers)
UK: 57.4% (18.7 million total customers)
Romania: 61.6% (9.5 million total customers)
New Zealand: 71.5% (2.5 million total customers)
Greece: 71.5% (5.9 million total customers)
Portugal: 79% (5.6 million total customers)
Turkey: 86.4% (15.4 million total customers)
Italy: 87.1% (22.9 million total customers)
India: 93.2% (68.7 million total customers)
Albania: 93.6% (1.3 million total customers)
Egypt: 96% (18.9 million total customers)
Ghana: 99.6% (1.7 million total customers)

freitasm

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#239231 27-Jul-2009 08:08

I see some comments in the Vodafone forum about this discussion, so I will reply here:

"The difference with Telecom, is that they will most likely quote new XT Customer acquisitions (which are mainly CDMA cutomers moving to the new XT platform), but the proof in the pudding would be to see how many "actual brand new customers" (not old CDMA customers) have actually jumped ship & furthermore, how many customers have been acquired onto their CDMA Network."

This makes no sense in this context.

"Additions" refers to new customers gained by the company. Oviously moving from one plan or service to another (which CDMA to WCDMA ultimately is) shouldn't be considered "additions". Also we have no idea what Telecom is going to report, so comments such as "they will most likely" is out of the blue.

"Interestingly enough - the discussion on Geekzone fails to acknowledge that TelstraClear have since dropped Telecom & resigned a MVNO Agreement with Vodafone as their preferred network provider. This is a significant 30,000 customer gain to Vodafone, although though aren't actually Vodafone customers, but they do use Vodafone's Network."

Previous comment about "additions" are based on results issued by Vodafone Group PLC.

The comment also makes no sense. Peviously TelstraClear was acting as a reseller so any new TelstraClear customer was automatically a Vodafone customer. The new contract sees TelstraClear as a MVNO, so any new TelstraClear customer is a TelstraClear customer, nothing else.

freitasm

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#239233 27-Jul-2009 08:13

Also I see Vodafone Group PLC is no longer reporting the number of 3G handsets being sold:

"Following a review of the data included in the Interim Management Statement, some amendments are being made to the layout of the document and to reduce information that is duplicated elsewhere in Vodafone?s publicly released information. In particular, information related to previous periods will now only be available in the publicly released spreadsheet. Information on 3G devices will no longer be reported.

All tabular information that was previously available in the Interim Management Statement, with the exception of information on 3G devices, will be included in a spreadsheet to be released on 24 July 2009 on www.vodafone.com/investor."

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#239257 27-Jul-2009 09:26

Maybe the subscription rate has just dropped because the remaining people in NZ just dont want cellphones ?
Theres only so many people in NZ..... if they want to boost their numbers again, I'll take a free iPhone on prepay thanks!

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#249314 21-Aug-2009 09:30

Telecom announced their quarterly results today.

Their customer numbers are down by 26000 customers in the same quarter.

VFNZPaulBrislen

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#249781 23-Aug-2009 11:40

Vodafone PLC group figures don't include Wholesale so just for clarity, that Vodafone NZ number is retail only. Wholesale is in addition to that.

Cheers

Paul

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